s down a year or two in advance. What prince could forgive such
aggravated insolence? It is the more atrocious, since the farmer is
polite, well-mannered, and much better educated than the prince; he
can give his daughters much larger fortunes, and could buy the entire
principality for his own son, if by chance the prince were obliged to
sell it. The cultivation of estates by means of these people is, in
the eyes of the Roman princes, an attack upon the rights of property.
Their passion for incessant work is a disturbance of the delightful
Roman tranquillity. The fortunes they acquire by personal exertion,
energy, and activity, are a reproach by inference to that stagnant
wealth which is the foundation of the State, and the admiration of the
Government.

This is not all: the _mercante di campagna_, who is not nobly born,
who is not a priest, who has a wife and children, thinks he has a
right to share in the management of the affairs of his country, upon
the ground that he manages his own well. He points out abuses; he
demands reforms. What audacity! The priests would cast him forth as
they would a mere advocate, were it not that his occupation is the
most necessary of all occupations, and that by turning out a man they
might starve a district.

But the insolence of these agricultural contractors goes still
further. They presume to be grand in their ideas. One of them, in
1848, under the reign of Mazzini, when the public works were suspended
for want of money, finished the bridge of Lariccia, one of the finest
constructions of our time, at his own expense. He certainly knew not
whether the Pope would ever return to Rome to repay him. He acted like
a real prince; but his audacity in assuming a part which was not
intended for his caste, merited something more than contempt.

I, who have not the honour to be a prince, have no reason to despise
the _mercanti di campagna_. Quite the contrary. I have solid ones for
esteeming them highly. I have found them full of intelligence,
kindness, and cordiality: middle-class men in the best sense of the
term. My sole regret is that their numbers are so few, and that their
scope of action is so limited.

If there were but two thousand of them, and the Government allowed
them to follow their own course, the Roman Campagna would soon assume
another aspect, and fever and ague take themselves off.

The foreigners who have inhabited Rome for any length of time, speak
of the middle-class